STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING is the blog for THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN.
We are always happy to be sent stuff to listen to and write about (we would prefer physical copies of singles/EPs/albums but we do realise that in some cases it is just not practical).
Contact us via our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/TheePsychedelicatessen or email us at theepsychedelicatessen@gmail.com

Tuesday, 24 May 2016

TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE PSYCHEDELIC
BASEMENT returns on
Saturday 28th May with a joint broadcast from THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN and ATOM
HEART MUTHA. 3 hours of mind bending groovy Psychedelia, Krautrock and
kosmik Space Rock from the edge of the universe.

For our 90
minute segment of the show we will be playing a mix of tunes that have landed
in our psychedelic basement over the last six months………..we have selected the
best of the best, many of the records have been reviewed on Strange Things Are
Happening this year. If you check the monthly menus since January you will find
the original reviews.

Our “Strange
Things” Mix opens with a track from the stunning new Luck Of Eden Hall album The Acceleration Of Time, due for release
early June, which we described as “Falling
somewhere between early 70s Prog Rock and full blown headswirling Psychedelic
Rock, this record really should carry some kind of warning……… exposure to
TLoEH’s sprawling double album masterpiece will most certainly lead to a
seriously blown mind.” We have selected the album’s opening track ‘Slow’, “a peel of chiming/ticking clocks leading
into a squall of swirling guitar and dreamy keyboard swell which sounds not
unlike a third cousin, twice removed, of the lead track from the Dukes Of
Stratosphear’s seminal mid 80s 25 O’Clock EP”.

We have
included two tracks that feature ex-Steppes guitarist John Fallon’s new band The
Laissez Fairs………..‘I Don't Mind’ is a collaboration with Herself (one of the many musical guises
of former Lay Llamas member Gioele Valenti) and is taken from the Gleaming EP,
a record of “delicate Psych tinted
Alt-Folk that summons the ghost of Nick Drake to come and hang with Mercury Rev
mixed with a more Psych Rock feel as John Fallon and Joe Lawless from The
Laissez Fairs fill in the gaps left in Herself’s lo-fi sketches”. From The
Laissez Fairs debut record we have picked the standout track ‘Primrose Hill’
which has the feel of “late 60s Kinks
before a surge of guitars push the track to a swirling psychedelic climax”.

All aboard
the Love Mobile, it’s the Liquid Scene
and “riffing off the intro to ‘Dear
Prudence’, ‘Hey Moondog’ is an epic hallucinogenic journey to the centre of the
mind” and from Sons Of The Void
the lysergically warped ‘Don't Forget To Prey’………”it’s as if pop history
has been rewritten and the Byrds made lo-fi records with Timothy Leary”. Back in the 90s Sons Of The Void
David Max was a member of the fantastic Tadpoles……….after
digging the SotV album we picked up the “best of” album Use With Headphones
Late At Night and have selected the stunning track ‘Race You To The Mustard
Patch’……….in our original review we pondered “After hearing this we must now go and check out the Tadpoles records
from the 90s………if they are anywhere as good as this, they are going to be
pretty special”……….and yes, they are. We have also picked a couple of
obscurities from the first two releases from the ace Mega Dodo Singles Club………from
The Honey Pot,‘Into The Deep’ is the B-Side of their
dreamy ‘Lisa Dreams’ single and is “a
slow burning, darker, more menacing acid fried Psych number underpinned by
rumbling bass and groovy drums. Imagine the Doors at their lysergic, swampiest,
slinkiest best…….it’s a total trip” and from Finnish PsychHeads Octopus Syng, ‘Reverberating Garden
Number 7' is a lycergic swirl of 60s inspired Psych. The track is also included
on their new album Hollow Ghost/Rochelle Salt which we will be reviewing soon
on Strange Things.

From our
German friends World In Sound Records we have tracks from the recently reissued
lost gem by the much travelled psychedelic explorer Imaad Wasif and the Berlin based NZ Indie/Psych band Sun And The Wolf……………………..Strange Hexes by Imaad Wasif with Two
Part Beast was a “tense, trippy
collection of songs that become fiercely emotional explorations” and “unbelievably intense with sparkling,
raga-influenced guitar and a mystic bent” which unfortunately dropped right
off the radar. It has always been a mystery why this fantastic record
disappeared without trace with only a few Psych Rock heads ever hearing it. We
have mixed into our 90 minutes of psychedelic groove ‘Unveiling’, “an absolute face melter of a track,
incorporating Eastern modal tunings and drones slowly unfolding into a
blistering guitar workout”. Sun And The Wolf mix together “taut, incendiary Indie Rock with a
technicolour psychedelic swirl that evokes such early 90s bands as House Of
Love, Sun Dial, Levitation, Spiritualized and the early psychedelic EPs from
Verve as the band explore the darker realms of fuzz driven psychedelia with
catchy riffage and splashes of The Beatles´ lysergic era” Although their
most recent album, Salutations, has some of the worst cover artwork we have
seen for many a year, it contains nine cuts of excellent neo-Psychedelia……..we
have picked the squalling Psychedelic Rock of ‘Why Are We Not Fading’ for the
fourth instalment of Transmissions From The Psychedelic Basement.

Psychic Lemon’s headswirler of a debut record is a “relentless sonic assault from start to
finish only letting up for a moment for the Floydian shimmer of ‘Analogue
Summer’” which we have included in our mix………..there are also tracks from
other new bands that are starting to turn Heads (on). We have also picked tunes
from Greek Garage/Psych trio Screaming DEad
Balloons, Spanish Neo-Psych band Stay
(think Kula Shaker if they were not absolute rubbish…….Stay have actually got
some corking tunes and ‘Mind Blowing’ is…..err…..mind blowing) and Norwegian
Psych Rockers Mayflower Madame who’s
debut album is “infused with all the dark
intensity of the great 80s Psych/Goth records but not sounding out of place
with any of the more recent Psych releases” and ’Lovesick’ is not unlike “Echo & The Bunnymen covering Bauhaus
with sparkling guitars blended with a real sense of menace”. We have also
included a pair of top tracks from the much less obscure Bardo Pond and The Liminanas
in an attempt to garner mass market appeal………Thee Psychedelicatessen sell
out!!!

“Plastic Crimewave - He’s a guy, he’s a band,
he’s a multi-coloured forward-thinking arthole of Tardis Dementions. He’s a
Futuretro freak, he’s a sibilant gas, he’s a rock’n roll-a-holic” and who
are we to disagree the Arch Drude, Julian Cope……..writer, artist, creator of
the beloved psychedelic magazine Galactic Zoo Dossier, musician and arguably
the Godfather of the current fertile Chicago Psych scene, Plastic Crimewave
(aka Steve Krakow) has been making seriously far out records for the best part
of 20 yrs. He has a new band, Plastic
Crimewave Syndicate whose self-titled second album “comprises of six heavy and transcendental compositions which take
inspiration from the relentless riffing of early Loop, the Kosmic Punk chaos of
Chrome and Guru Guru and the 70s Space Rock adventures Hawkwind as they explore
the outer dimensions of their sound”. To finish off our 90 minute selection
of tunes we have picked the 10 minute ‘Void of Eternity’, “destined to be a stoner classic……….a spliff odyssey so dense and
unremitting it sucks all the sweet smelling vapour out of the room as you
dissolve into your sofa, stoned immaculate”.

There you go
People………90 minutes of top notch psychedelic sounds. Transmissions From The
Psychedelic Basement will be available to live stream at 8pm GMT at www.mixlr.com/wwwbigjafnet with a
repeat on the USA Internet station Grip Of Delusion radio the next day……….we
are not sure of the transmission time as GOD moves in mysterious ways, so check
our FB and Twitter for actual times. The whole 3hours will then be available
via the Atom Heart Mutha Mixcloud site to listen to whenever you want.